A Vintage Like No Other

Updated Oct. 13, 2000 9:40 a.m. ET

Like so many others, my wife and I had a bottle that we were saving. It was a '94 Opus One, given to me for my 40th birthday by Pete Brown, my wife's cousin. We had always meant to open it -- on an anniversary, one of my wife's promotions, the purchase of our house, my having become an independent consultant...but somehow, we never did.

Our lives seem to have just become too busy -- working too late, opening the pool, closing the pool -- taking care of 'chores'. This year, my wife had been teasing me about having gotten...